


Meet Him Where He Lives

by Holladay Street (street)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Development, M/M, Season 1 Spoilers, Snooping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-14
Updated: 2012-07-14
Packaged: 2017-11-09 22:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/street/pseuds/Holladay%20Street
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Jack pokes around in Ianto's apartment and draws some conclusions.<br/>Disclaimer: Torchwood is property of the BBC et al.<br/>Cautions: References to cannon character death, snide implications about the origins of folding music stands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meet Him Where He Lives

Ianto. Half ageless gentleman half college sophomore, Jack thinks as he opens the kitchen cabinet. No coffee equipment here. Ianto’s stepped out for some takeaway - so says the note by his pillow (the note he heard Ianto write while he lazed, twined in the sheets and still half asleep, waiting to see how Ianto would shape this first morning on his home turf). 

Shoe trees. He owns multiple sets of shoe trees. And the exact range of suits and shirts Jack has seen him wear to work - no more. A couple of leather jackets, a single pair of jeans, a pair of black boots so tall and heavy that Jack’s eyebrows to rise in speculation, and precious little other clothing. The spice rack is full, but the fridge is nearly empty. The cupboard beneath the sink holds a vast collection of cleaning products, but a paper bag with the edge rolled down substitutes for a rubbish bin. Plush towels in the bathroom - two of each size - but a disposable razor. A pair of antique lamps bracket the futon on the floor. Jack puzzles over what looks like a piece of pilfered alien tech leaning in the corner, before realizing that it is in fact a folding music stand. What does he play, Jack wonders. No sheet music in the careful piles of books arranged opposite the mattress. And no bookshelves.

A battered bicycle is propped behind the door (a sudden vision of Ianto tracking Myfanwy on it, pedaling madly through muddy shipyards with his trouser cuffs tucked carefully into his socks so as to maintain the crease), and Ianto’s car is a new addition Jack realizes. Bought with pay from Torchwood Three - probably his first real outlay. It's his first investment in himself in the past year now that his pay cheque isn’t being pumped into Lisa’s veins in the form of illicit medications. 

Jack is familiar with the itinerant condition, but never before has he associated it with Ianto. The poised poker-faced man, barely out of his teens but wrapped in fine cotton and wool styled in a manner not instilled in young men for the past seventy years. Jack had always imagined a wealthy past for Ianto - mostly based on the public school transcipt in his file. Jack had always assumed that Ianto’s past, and his present, were cushioned by a standard of living that matched his taste in clothes and coffee and (as Jack had discovered last night) wine.

But he moved here without a car. Without movers or a couch or a bed substantial enough to anchor the cuffs and ropes tucked in the back of his sock drawer. More likely (Jack thinks as he inspects the row of house plants, most with price stickers still attached) he moved without room for more than a few hasty boxes crammed in amongst the life support equipment. Packed in a van from whatever moving company was lucky enough to rent to a young man moving a semi-comatose metal monster out to the provinces. He cared enough to grab what was precious (a wooden box full of recipe cards written in an unfamiliar hand, a pair of garish hand-knit mittens). The rest was purely function.


End file.
